Acción colectiva y gestión compartida para la sostenibilidad socioeconómica: la Red de Alimentos Cooperativos y los alcances de la innovación organizativa (Argentina, 2023-2025) / Collective action and shared management for socioeconomic sustainability: The Cooperative Food Network and the scope of organisational innovation (Argentina, 2023-2025)

Abstract

This paper examines the case of the Cooperative Food Network (Argentina) through the lens of La Minga Marketing Company (from the Province of La Rioja), which supplies food to the Network. This organisational innovation project has a national scope and was implemented between 2023 and 2025, a period characterised by an adjustment and subsequent recession of the national economy. Specifically, the study analyses the link between collective action, shared management, and the construction of socioeconomic sustainability at two scales: the provincial and the national. The research employs a triangulation approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods using primary and secondary data sources. Among the main results, the following should be noted: i) regarding organisational innovation, the construction and stabilisation of ties, as well as the formation of an associative identity among cooperative members and their federations, becomes relevant in self-managed commercial experiences aimed at resolving administrative, logistical, and financial problems in the absence of solutions offered by the capitalist market; ii) shared management highlights the paternalism that operates in the realm of public policies and reveals a horizontal approach to designing and implementing them, although dependent on political will, which can make it volatile; and iii) collective action develops beyond the state structure, and it is there that the construction of socio-economic sustainability lies, which is dynamic and conditioned by the macro-economic context.